Make the Noise

The term “Litmus Test” has been colloquially used to refer to a simple / non-complex test, with a pass or fail.  For The Social Media Litmus Test, I propose (at this moment in time) a simple question to serve as the litmus paper: “Are you on Twitter?”

When social networks were all the buzz I would have recommended the question “Are you on MySpace?.”  In the 90’s, the question may have been “Are you on Geocities?” or  even a farther throw-back, “Are you on AOL?”  And next year, the litmus test for your social-media savvy level may be a completely different question.  While I realize Twitter is just the latest trend,  if you want to be successful in any industry today, you must know and be involved with the latest wave that is changing the game.

This past week I had the rare opportunity to test two different groups back to back, opposites of each other both dynamically and demographically.  On Wednesday, I spoke with a group of college students about new media, and on Thursday I attended a tech-dinner on the gaming industry with a group of individuals that were well established and had been in the industry for years.

During each of these sessions I conducted my mini experiment and the results were shocking, revealing, and proof that these two separate generations haven’t kept up with the trends.

I’ll provide a full analysis of these two groups and others in the weeks to come.

Stay Tuned!

Today I received what is becoming a very common type of  email from a blogger asking if there I had any news or products she could review as it’s been slow for her lately.   The mid-sized blogs who were once embraced (and bombarded) under the umbrella of the blogosphere have become extraneous in the minds of traditionalists.  Traditional PR is now too busy hunting the bigger fish with editorialized content and a full-time staff, and who, for all intents and purposes, are truly part of the new “traditional” media.

What is most interesting to me about this trend however is that my clients see the most click-throughs from the mid-level blog hits. Their stickiest traffic comes from sites whose writers aren’t part of the big corporate blogging machine, but have passionate and rabid readers despite their size.

One thing publicists must remember is that social media will forever be about connecting with people on a personal and meaningful level.  That is why it is crucially important to remember that our auidences aren’t neccessarily just reading the biggest and the brightest sites, but are dedicated subscribers to the smaller voices of those who write because they love what they are talking about and want to share. Remember the little guys, they are the ones who will always stand by your side and help to make the noise real.

In yet another way to say “Go to Hell” to the PR industry, Arrington wrote a post yesterday that caused blogosphere that I “live” in light up with firey response. “Death to Embargo” http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/  outlined where and why PR in general should go.

Here’s the thing, while the posts that were popping up left and right after the debut of this bit of “news” (self-manufactured, imho), not one of them reminded the bloggers, journalists and writers in general that even if they think they don’t need PR people, they do.

Does anyone know how difficult it is to get a quote from a CEO at some companies?  Or how convoluted the companies descriptions, news items and announcements are before *we* the PR people make them nice and shiny – make them make sense?

Its different than marketing – it’s about understanding what is newsworthy and reaching the right people with it, before it breaks. And its about larger trend pieces from the inside that we’re observing as a company and would like to share with the world.

Without the Embargo, stories would be thrown up on the wire and no-one gets to “Break” the story except for PRNewswire, MarketWire, etc.

Fight on ReadWriteWeb, and the rest of the blogging sites with scruples… http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/we_will_respect_your_embargoes.php

For this post, I’ll go a bit off from my usual PR focus, as I have been discussing with a few of my friends the sheer brilliance of the McCain camp for choosing Sarah Palin… at first we all thought he was nuts, a no-name governor from a state the size of Riverside, CA, yet no, wait a minute, look at this, the winds are shifty, the soccer moms are coming together, and bam, the brilliance of it all comes through…. A Woman of the People… A women just like you! … I am a democrat, proud of it, will always be, and personally the idea of this woman being a heart-beat away from the Presidency scares me to death.  However you can not discount the Palin-Effect.

I’ll define the Palin-Effect as something that seems really stupid at first, but after some time, it becomes clear it’s brilliant.  People love train-wrecks, and who doesn’t like a train-wreck that happens to have some upbeat moments…

I think the same will go for these Microsoft ads (http://www.microsoft.com/windows). While it seems almost beyond belief that 300 million dollars would result in something so unbelievably horrible and completely pointless, it got people talking… and I think if we give the good ol’ boys over at Microsoft a moment, the sheer brilliance will come through.

 It’s about good-will and making people feel warm and fuzzy.  Both Palin and Microsoft are doing a darn good job of reaching the warm and fuzzy button for the majority of Americans.  What a world we live in, where the actual brain need not think any more, rather let us all just lead with warm and fuzzy emotions.

As Obama has been quoted many times in saying…. you can put lipstick on a pig, but in the end, it is still a pig….

Wonder how many people will not realize this truth before its too late.

Internet Defense Reports:

Spammer Robert Soloway Update: 4 Years in Prison

After an unusually long sentencing hearing (it lasted two-and-a-half days), Judge Marsha Pechman handed down her sentence in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle.

Per the Official Press Release from United States Attorney’s Office : “ROBERT ALAN SOLOWAY, 29, the owner of NEWPORT INTERNET MARKETING CORPORATION of Seattle, Washington, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to forty-seven months in prison and three years of supervised release for Mail Fraud, Fraud in Connection with Electronic Mail, and Willful Failure to File a Tax Return. In addition, he was directed to perform 200 hours of community service. At a later hearing, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman will determine the total amount of restitution SOLOWAY owes to the victims of his spamming.”

There has been a lot of press on this being this is one of the biggest trials of an email spammer to date. Just some of the articles I found:

• Blogger News: Will One Spam King’s Conviction and Another’s Escape Mean Less E-Trash on the Internet?, July 25th
• The News Tribune: A lovely prison term for the ‘spam king’, July 25th
• Biz Journal: ‘Spam King’ Soloway given 47-month prison sentence, July 23rd
• PC World: Top Spammer Sentenced to Nearly Four Years, July 22nd
• The Spam Diaries: Word from the Soloway sentencing hearing, July 15th
• CIO: Soloway Case Reveals Big Business Behind Spam, July 15th
• Computer World: Judge delays ’spam king’ sentencing, July 14th
• Komo News: Victims testify at Spam King’s sentencing, July 11th
• Seattle PI: ‘Spam King’ defied Feds, now faces up to 20 years, July 11th

This morning I started reading a book that my boss gave me last week called “Radically Transparent” by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss. The foreword was written by Robert Scoble, and it piqued by curiosity. Scoble attempts to debunk Public Relations and any type of communications strategy by citing his corporate experience with Microsoft and proclaiming the absolute importance of transparency at the micro level. He depicts Apples as a type of Public Relations Nazi, forbidding the entry level employees to even mention they work for Apple on a social media platform, and touts Dell as a demigod for embracing the utter and complete openness of all workers. But a question that keeps coming up in my mind, especially between these two specific product companies is: ‘Does it matter to the masses?.’

Apple is very strict on its messaging, it does this to ensure that when a product is being developed the noise level doesn’t burn out by the time the product comes into the market. Would the iPhone have achieved such success if Apple wasn’t able to stop the person who happened to work on designing the packaging from blogging about specific specs before the launch? Probably not. While the product is cool, if a year before launch, details on this super-secret product had been spewed out to the world without any type of filtering, it would have been torn apart, digested, and spit back out by the time it reached stores. Public Relations and marketing in general is all about the timing. And especially in technology, it’s all about the type. If a product release can be controlled, the “cool” factor can be fed and fostered, instead of the flaws taking center stage.

Scoble claims that Dell is the leader in transparency for their industry because they are accepting of feedback and allow employees to air publicly their latest discoveries, therefore creating evangelists online for their products. He does mention the downfalls of total transparency, but minimalized their true impacts. But who, in this war for internet evangelists, is winning? Last I checked, there weren’t millions of sites of Dell Fans, nor stories about Dell fanatics getting on prime-time TV because of their love for the product. The lack of micro-transparency on Apple’s part doesn’t mean that they aren’t listening to their users, it means that they are able to create market share first with a planned strategy and then listen.

In the end, does micro-transparency matter to the masses? I don’t think so. I think honesty matters, and to get the best picture of the entire process and be transparent as a company doesn’t mean that the guys working on one piece of the big pie can provide the best picture for the world, nor garner the biggest support / evangelists for the company. As you can see by the photo, it’s not a Dell store that people were camping out in front of..

(Photo by: richardmasoner WikiMedia Commons)

A very well-respected blogger/writer just covered the Bombay Sapphire project we have been working on this spring.

New blog: The Spirit Of Exploration

As an ex-public relations executive, I’m always looking into how PR companies these days are trying to tap into our blogosphere in a way that is productive not only for them, but for their intellectual audience as well. Whatever I’ve seen so far has not really been worth it, with the fake Walmart blog about an American couple traveling around the country and visiting every Walmart, taking the cake for blunder value.

However, today I came across brand Bombay Sapphire’s (gin) new blog initiative called “The Spirit of Exploration”, and was quite impressed with what I saw. They’ve managed to get a large group of good travel bloggers to blog about what to them is the meaning of “the spirit of exploration”, along with any other adventurous travel/living abroad stories.

The blog makes a good read precisely because it’s been written on by a wide collection of well-selected travel-bloggers, many of whose blogs are worth checking out. I wonder what inspired them to share such great stories on the blog of an alcohol brand; definitely a successful PR tactic, we’ll have to see how long they maintain it post launch phase.

In case you’re a blogger and would like to share your definition of “the spirit of exploration”, the blog is also running a contest on the same where you can win a trip to…urrr..I’m not sure where. Full details here.

Posted by Abha Malpani | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was having a discussion with a few of my friends of mine earlier today about the importance of transparency in social media and how full disclosure plays an important role. But what does that mean?  In an age where no major corporation ever says anything unless it has been filtered through PR, legal and about ten other departments, is it possible to have full-disclosure on a corporate blog, and does it really provide the open dialog that is crucially needed? Or would egos get in the way, and self-interest take center stage over the corporation?

Many CEO’s rarely have the time to write every single piece of material that will be presented to the world.  Speeches are drafted daily for them.  How is a blog post any different than a speech that has been washed through the cycles that are usually accepted as standard practice?  How is a blog, a written speech of sorts,  not supposed to have these facets of protection built in?  Is it truly dishonest to have a PR firm write a corporate blog?  Can corporations afford to be nakedly honest without any safeguards built in?  Haven’t we seen this be a problem in the past? 

If we are going with full disclosure on everything, shouldn’t every single speech given have a notation somewhere that it was written, edited, tweaked and approved by the laundry list of individuals?  Isn’t a blog nothing more than an expression of the same corporate identity that PR firms represent on a daily basis?

To disclose, or not to disclose, that is the question… whether tis nobler in the mind… ok I’ll stop with the Hamlet speech… I wonder, though, how many people helped Shakespeare craft it?